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Old 05-27-2005, 10:30 AM   #4
rmeister0
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I'm finding this entire debate to be silly and pointless.

My preference for reading will still be books, but particularly for nice, durable hardcovers that I'm going to want to keep for a long time. For my technical titles (I think I've bought Tim O'Reilly a yacht by now), a paper book is a lot faster to leaf through and study than any e-book I've tried.

There are two applications of e-books that have been very successful for me. In the first instance, a lot of older titles that no longer remain in print. There's a lot of old pulp material surfacing on the usual channels, and even a fair amount of Burroughs and Howard that just don't get into print very often.

In the second instance, I have a number of old paperbacks of a 60's and 70's vintage; they have really crappy glue binding that has dried up and become brittle. I scanned them into pdf files (4x7" at 300dpi, not too shabby), and they display very nicely on the 800x470 7" screen my Intermec 6651 has. All the usual advantages of taking less space apply, and the Intermec is about as portably as any trade paperback.

In the last two years I've played around with this though, there are three very serious problems with e-books today. 1 and 2 are the DRM issue and the short lifespan of proprietary file formats. It's one thing not to be able to read a $5 magazine ten years from now, but a $15 book is entirely another matter. 3rd is the incredibly piss-poor proof-reading job many books get.
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